The Rooftop Growing Guide

Posted in From the Library on June 9 2016, by Esther Jackson

Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.

The Rooftop Growing Guide comes from NYBG’s own Annie Novak, the Manager of the Edible Academy. Novak writes clearly, with accessible prose and an eye to the practical. Yes, we should think big…. and look up! However, while it may seem that the sky is the limit when it comes to rooftop growing, Novak continuously reminds the reader of real-world concerns and offers detailed and practical advice to would-be rooftop gardeners.

Chapter titles include “Why Rooftops?,” “Assessing Your Rooftop,” “Containers, Greenhouses, Green Roofs, and Irrigation Methods,” “The Dirt on Rooftop Soil,” and several other sections that carry the reader through a successful rooftop garden. Simple graphic guides are included to lead the reader through activities such as assessing one’s roof or understanding seed viability and germination rates. Supplemental content is arranged carefully in sections that include technical how-tos and profiles of rooftop gardens and gardening activities.

Novak’s “Grow with the Pros” supplement represents one of the great strengths of Rooftop Growing Guide. The interviews that the author conducted with other professionals in the rooftop growing community make for great reading and include both practical advice and windows into what rooftop gardening looks like in the real world. Novak’s love for food, plants, and people is the thread that winds throughout this book, and her inclusion of the voices of others from the rooftop growing world is especially compelling.

Novak writes in the introduction: “There is something of the sailor’s spirit in the view from a building’s roof. The wind is in your hair, the eye-level tree canopy ripples like waves, and the blank slate of your newfound growing space is a freshly discovered island, full of thrilling possibilities.” With Rooftop Growing Guide in hand as a map for the journey ahead, the possibilities abound.

The Rooftop Growing Guide by Annie Novak. Ten Speed Press, 2016. 256 pages, color photos. Softcover. $23.00. ISBN: 9781607747086